Posted
by
timothyon Thursday July 19, 2012 @03:32PM
from the brogrammers-at-work dept.

netbuzz writes "Microsoft has apologized and promised to rectify the fact that one of its developers slipped a sexist phrase into Linux kernel code supporting Microsoft's HyperV virtualization environment. In that code, the magic constant passed through to the hypervisor reads '0xB16B00B5,' or a slightly camouflaged 'BIG BOOBS.' After Linux developer/blogger Matthew Garrett criticized Microsoft for the stunt, the predictable debate over sexism in the technology world ensued. Microsoft issued a statement to Network World apologizing and added, 'We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel.'"

It's sexist in that if a very talented woman programmer was going around hacking in the kernel and found it, it might make her feel uncomfortable. As such, it contributes to the feeling that Linux kernel development is an area in which women aren't welcome... And believe it or not, sort of thing is the reason why there are so few female programmers. Our "tiny female brains" can cope with the actual work *just fine*. :)

I think you accidentally got to the real heart of the issue. Microsoft has to keep up appearances, as an established corporation. But this code was not written in the open source world, not for Linux, and not intended to be distributed at all. It was supposed to be hidden in the basement.

Microsoft was forced to release this code because they released binaries built with GPL components. Those binaries were to make Linux work well with Microsoft's hypervisor. Not to make Linux look good, but to make virtual Linux useable enough that they keep paying for a Windows host license (on the next server, or OS upgrade).

This magic number is a guest OS ID definition for Microsoft's Hyper-V. As far as anyone knows, this might be a magic value already in place in some of Microsoft's code, and they had to use the same value in the Linux implementation. If that's not the case, it's still internal code that they had no intention of releasing as source.

My guess is that someone who doesn't respect Linux intentionally violated the identity convention. In that case, it's not about sexism at all. Substituting a childish phrase for an operating system ID is about respect for the product, and little if anything to do with respect for women. If a woman wants to see it as offensive that is perfectly valid. But from what I can tell not the intent at all.

The "predictable debate over sexism in the technology world" is being driven by people who take things out of context for the increased page loads. It could very well be told as "Source code divulged after GPL violation reveals Microsoft employs at least one immature developer." But the focus on sexism almost makes the ads click themselves.

This is at worst childish, not sexist.Anyone who sees it as sexist is trolling for attention or is trying to make herself feel special.Your own feelings about linux kernel development have very little significance toward linux development.You are here LOOKING for sexism.You are seeing the world through sexism-coloured glasses.It's ridiculous.Stop.

As a vegetarian, I am offended that Microsoft's implementation marks free'd memory with 0xDEADBEEF! I demand that this be changed to something that won't offend me! Or Hindus! Or people with irrational dislike of certain numbers when represented in hex!

I took technical writing in college, and we had a female professor teaching the class: Dana Witmer. One of my lab partners got the bright idea to name the technical file "dirtydana" which I have to admit was funny, but I stopped laughing when they told me they *handed it in* with that name.

About a week later the professor met with all the students and commented that our filename was "interesting" and then started giggling. Not all women are uptight over trivial stuff.

As for WHY women don't like engineering/programming, I think it's because they are smart. They are smart enough not to go into such a boring field where the managers or HR treat you like low-level employees to be shoved into basement offices & worked 50 hours w/o overtime pay.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is another bit of typical patriarchy talk -- if a woman feels uncomfortable with something men are doing, she's automatically "uptight" or "frigid." Sorry, but no. Professionalism dictates keeping this sort of thing out of the workplace. Sure, some women may be able to laugh it off for the sake of appearing to be a "team player" and putting the men on the team at ease, but honestly I can't imagine very many of us are actually truly completely comfortable with the idea of people we aren't reasonably intimate with commenting on our chests.

I don't disagree that this can often be an exceedingly boring field to work in. At the same time, it's a reasonably well paying one, and a basement office can still be brightened up considerably with a few plants and tasteful paintings. As long as you don't have an officemate who's constantly showering you with unsolicited innuendo.

"but honestly I can't imagine very many of us are actually truly completely comfortable with the idea of people we aren't reasonably intimate with commenting on our chests."

No one has said anything about commenting on the size of a specific individual's chest. If it were personal I could understand how it would make someone feel uncomfortable, but I still wouldn't consider it "sexist" because it would also make me feel uncomfortable if someone were to comment on the size of my nose or my waist line.

"Professionalism dictates keeping this sort of thing out of the workplace."

I disagree with that profoundly. The most productive professional environment is one in which everyone gets along, has a good time and enjoys what they're doing. If certain individuals feel uncomfortable it is either because they are being singled out or bullied unfairly (in which case there is something wrong with the environment) or they have a personal problem with the way the business is run (which does not necessarily mean there's something wrong with the individual, just that it's not a good fit).

Femminism is supposed to be about equality and social change, right ? Then here's a social "problem" I would like the change: the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of "feminism." For example: if a guy expresses his sexuality or his sexual nature in any way he is labeled a "pig" but if a woman does it it's applauded as "liberating."

I was raised by a single mom with a tremendous amount of support from her single mom. Both describe themselves as "feminists." Both also talk about "patriarchy" but as a male who was born after 1980 I gotta say... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction.

The people who I find to be most "sexist" are self-proclaimed "feminists." They constantly draw attention to the differences between the sexes, and by appropriating a title such as "feminism" (emphasis on the root "fem") they are taking a position that there is an inherent conflict between the two sexes, that sides must be chosen and they have chosen the side of women. The foundation of the philosophy is not unifying but polarizing. If they had any pretense of "equality" they would identify themselves as "egalitarian." If they had a pretense about equal rights under the law whilst respecting (or celebrating) natural differences that exist between all individuals they would identify themselves as individualist. Instead they keep dragging the issue of gender through the mud and make everyone, male and female alike, uncomfortable.

I don't really feel like this is an appropriate forum to get into an in-depth discussion of feminist philosophy.

That being said, IMHO if female coworkers were routinely commenting on the size of your nose or your waist line, that would very definitely be unprofessional behavior on their part. And if a female programmer named her constants things like "TINY_DICK_LOSER," I'd count that as sexism.

I'm not suggesting or supporting any sort of double standard -- I'm just suggesting that a professional environment involves placing a few boundaries on your behavior in order to make *sure* that, to use your words, "everyone gets along, has a good time and enjoys what they're doing." That might mean not making the overweight man overly self conscious about his weight, it might mean making a point of making *eye contact* with the lady with the well-endowed chest, it might mean refraining from mentioning that you spent your weekend picketing an abortion clinic, or that you spent your weekend campaigning for gay marriage.

You don't make the assumption that your co-workers are all going to feel the same way as you on any potentially charged issue.

it might mean making a point of making *eye contact* with the lady with the well-endowed chest

Where I grew up, only ophthalmologists and people who wanted to fuck you made eye contact. Even after 13 years in the US, I still can't make eye contact without it becoming obvious how much I dislike it. If my gaze is further down it's because I was brought up to be polite.

On the other hand, I also grew up without equating breasts or nudity with sex. Big breasts, big ears, big calves - it's pretty much all the same. They're just body parts we all have in various sizes. *shrug*

"Femminism is supposed to be about equality and social change, right ? Then here's a social "problem" I would like the change: the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of "feminism." For example: if a guy expresses his sexuality or his sexual nature in any way he is labeled a "pig" but if a woman does it it's applauded as "liberating.""

[citation needed]

If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded.

You don't see the impact of patriarchal society because you don't experience the effects. The same way that many white people feel that there is no such thing as institutionalized racism in North America because they don't experience it.

If the comment in the code were 'slanty eyes' nobody would be disputing it's racist nature, but because this is an issue of sexism it's ignored. There is a societal bias against women, the same as there's one against minorities.

The foundation of the theory only seems polarizing because again, we as men, don't experience the institutionalized sexism that western society has. It's not overt "you can't do that because you're a woman" it's "here beautiful, let me do that for you." Just like institutionalized racism isn't a lynch mob lookin' to hang someone any more, it's being watched by security in a store for being black.

"If a woman was going around bragging about her conquests she'd be labelled a slut and people would talk shit on her, while the dude, after being called a pig, is applauded."

By women. The men I know would be asking for her phone number.

"You don't see the impact of patriarchal society because you don't experience the effects. The same way that many white people feel that there is no such thing as institutionalized racism in North America because they don't experience it."

I find that interesting because as I hinted to, I've experienced the same thing from a male's perspective, from my own family. I experience gender bias all the time from people who proudly label themselves "feminists." They make generalizations about men, they side with my wife every time the two of us have a dispute and we seek support from family, they speak for me as if they know what I'm going to do and the false assumptions they make are based on the fact that I have a penis. Women think they know what I'm thinking and what my intentions are just because I'm a man. So I know exactly how it feels and I do experience it, only I experience it from the same people who complaining about it most vocally.

That's what I was alluding to when I said "... I don't see it. In fact, I see the trend going in the opposite direction." and "the complete double-standard backwardness that has been instituted in the name of 'feminism.'"

I remember a time when I was working along side a female sysadmin. The two of us always got along and worked very well together. One day we had a dispute, I wish I could remember what it was about but it's not that important, she got extremely upset and accused me of being sexist and hating women etc. I would have been very open to the possibility that I said something which was perceived as sexist completely unintentionally, but fortunately for me the argument was made in front of several witnesses, some of them women, and they didn't understand where she was coming from. Now that may be her past experiences causing biases which were transferred to me, perhaps she worked with a lot of chauvinists and/or misogynists and something about our argument worked as a trigger, but I submit that as one small piece of anecdotal evidence that men are being thrown under the bus in a huge way and the "movement" is becoming quite hypocritical without even realizing it. Publicly accusing someone of gender bias in the workplace is a very big deal.

if a woman feels uncomfortable with something men are doing, she's automatically "uptight" or "frigid."

...and if a guy is uncomfortable with something women (or even other men) are doing, he usually gets called a "prude", or "uptight", or worse.

So if your point was that women have it oh-so-bad, and that's the worst you can come up with, then you're in for a big letdown out here in the real world, sister.

I daresay that it's quite the opposite these days. If a woman is "uncomfortable with something men are doing", one word to the HR department of any large company will see half of those men either fired or damned close to it.

Professionalism dictates keeping this sort of thing out of the workplace.

Please tell me where you work, so I don't ever accidentally apply there.

I know female sysadmins who can crank out jokes dirtier than any sailor can think up. We used to keep a rubber chicken hanging from a cable tray by a noose made of Cat6e. We went out of our way to come up with the most evil and funny descriptions of our incompetent (then)head of IT. The difference is that we kept it in the server room, and away from the serious bits.

In the real world of insane work hours and incredible pressure, any IT manager who insists on worshipping "Professionalism" usually finds him/her/itself having to explain high turnover/burn-out/wastage rates, and is quickly blackballed in the local professional network.

Sure, some women may be able to laugh it off for the sake of appearing to be a "team player" and putting the men on the team at ease, but honestly I can't imagine very many of us are actually truly completely comfortable with the idea of people we aren't reasonably intimate with commenting on our chests.

The cure is simple - comment on penises. I mean, shit - it's way the hell easier to joke about "shortcomings" than it is about "mosquito bites". I guarantee that shit will stop in a heartbeat if you fought fire with fire.

Life is rough - wear a helmet and remember to aim for the torso.

As long as you don't have an officemate who's constantly showering you with unsolicited innuendo.

There's a vast diff between the rare and occasional goof and "constantly showering". If you're seeing the latter, go to HR or get a lawyer. If you're seeing the former, then stand up for yourself and hit back, or ignore it. If you can't tell the difference, then the problem is yours, and you're making it everyone else's problem at the same time. So stop doing that, or I guarantee that your career will eventually crash and burn.

And yet your (and possibly other's) "tiny female brain" can't cope with this utterly insignificant and arguably inconsequential action which is bordering on a joke and blow this out of all proportions creating a fuss that is unworthy of anyone's time.

If the tables were reversed and a female programmer declared a function called insanely_large_dick() do you think any males would throw up their hands in the air and quit their jobs in IT because they felt threatened and/or harassed? There's nothing worse than having a super sensitive demographic (and I'm not just referring to females here) and having everyone else tip-toeing around them so as not to possibly offend them in any way shape or form. Grow some balls, get on with life and stop being offended by everything.

Had a Japanese VP who was in charge of industrial software design at a very famous company tell me, while in a meeting with myself and my staff, that women did not have the brains to be programmers. I was very proud that the two lead programmers did not jump up an beat the crap out of him right there and then. He thought they were secretaries taking minutes of the meeting.

It's sexist in that if a very talented woman programmer was going around hacking in the kernel and found it, it might make her feel uncomfortable.

Bullshit, what's sexist here is that you immediately assume it was a male who wrote it. Oh shit let's get all PC and outlaw codes like 0xDEADBEEF for fear of offending vegans...under the assumption that only non-vegans would ever use such a thing.

See, that's my problem. Your right to work in the computer industry is exactly equivalent to my write to say and write whatever the fuck I want.

I don't believe in equality, not gender equality, not race equality, nor any other kind of equality. I believe in something EVEN better: Individuality. Anyone can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as you don't step on anybody's rights. How about that? Implementing laws to make sure that everybody is equal is killing individuality, and I'm totally against that. You think that in order to get your right to work, I must forfeit my right to free speech?

If you are so sensitive that you can't handle a little comment on your source code, then you are not really as prepared for the job (or life) as you think you are.

If you really want to be equal, you shouldn't start by asking for special privileges. If you might feel "uncomfortable" because of something perfectly natural, then you are not fitted to work with a bunch of people. You can't be equal.

I definitely want more female coders, and more females in the workplace. But I don't want fragile stereotypes who can't handle reality.

I want mature and strong woman who are not scared away by a stupid sexual reference in a piece of code.

Not my style. I own a software company (well, we are manufacturing our own hardware too now , but we're still mostly a software company).

Sure, we hire good coders, but we hire good people, and that's above your coding ability. We have a great environment, and we don't want to spoil it with PC bullshit. We are animals, and so are most of our employees, and we'd like to keep it that way. And you wouldn't believe how much of an awesome environment you can get when people can be themselves, and not worry about what they can and can't do/say/wear/express/whatever. That's why we only hire non-religious people, people who aren't afraid of bad language, rough attitudes, bad smells, and that usually translates to people that isn't afraid of hard work either.

At my company, we troll each other badly, there are no limits, there is no respect for anybody, not even for the owners (my associate and me). Yes, when I fuck up my employees feel free to insult me, and I couldn't be happier about it. I enjoy the same freedom. We get together once a week for bbq and zombie movies. We have a basketball court in the back, and we play rough. Believe it or not, people is actually happy to come in to work on monday, because they feel fucking free. Many of them (specially those that are married) feel more free than they do at home. In our company, the lowest tech calls the CEO a fag for using apple products, and we all laugh, and that's just fine. Getting offended is GREAT. In our culture, this idea that people have a right to not be offended has grown big lately. It's plain wrong. Being offended makes you feel alive, challenges your preconceptions, and makes you overall a better person. It sparks change, and that is always a good thing.

We spend most of our life at work, mostly because it's what we love doing, it's our project, our company, regardless of how much stock you own. Keeping it _just_ professional would be a complete waste of your time.

The problem is that you want a long word that's instantly recognizable, unlikely to occur in normal use. Preferably odd so it will throw a violation on any pointer usage wider than bytes on most systems, and with the high bit set so it can trigger signed/unsigned 31/32 bit assignment tests.

And it should also be fairly unique - everyone uses 0xDEADBEEF and the other commonly known ones, so don't pick those if you want to know whether it was your driver that caused the crash.

B16B00B5 is near ideal in this respect, except for B00B being a loaded word in some cultures. I'm not sure DEFEC8ED or BABEF00D would be much better. 0xBAAAAAAD perhaps?

Yeah, but I doubt anyone is under the dilution that the person who slipped it in ment male or gender neutral breasts. Technicalities and what-ifs do not change what the person likely intended and the way it is read by, well, pretty much everyone.

So an argument could be made that, on average, women's boobs are statistically larger due to statistics.

I beg to differ. Most women 'obtain' big boobs believing they will attract a better mate. But surveys have been constantly reporting that the ideal breast size is 'C' in terms of aesthetic appeal. Women who get larger breasts than that are appealing to a smaller subset of mates, and there's no correlation between a man's reproductive success and his only mating with women of unusual breast size.

I'd argue even that the reverse is true, since as far as I can tell, overly-large breasts make men stupid, which is not an evolutionarily advantageous trait...

Of course "boobs" is specific to women. The homologous structures in men are known as "moobs".

There is no hex number that looks similar to "Moobs".From now on, all numbers must be represented as Unicode (it would not be politically correct to favor the character set used by any specific culture) where each 16-bit element specifies the text representation of the numerical value desired.

I am not sure any analogy can really be drawn. The issue isn't the specific word, but the culture around it. There is no equivalent since males have such a strong presence in geek and tech culture... they have no frame of reference to understand from. The best they can do is say 'I don't understand, but I accept that this matters and will keep it in mind'. Trying to convey it via something they can understand simply won't work....

"Just because they are the subject of the humor doesn't mean that they can't be overreacting"

And you're going to decide for them that they are overreacting? Again, it is mighty arrogant for someone to decide if someone else's feelings are valid or not.

"telling everyone else to shut the fuck up is equally wrong."

Did I tell anyone to STFU? Nope. I was using that as an example of what i've read in this thread directed at people who were offended. OP can say whatever he or she wants to, I'm pointing out what the words/actions are doing,

Oh, there's a lot of things that are now considered insensitive that didn't used to be. For instance "idiot" and "imbecile" used to be clinically accepted ways of describing people with low IQ (0-25, and of 26-50 respectively.)

My sister works in the mental health field and was horrified when I used the word "retarded" to describe a certain child. I believe the accepted term is now "differently tarded."

Many computer processors, operating systems, and debuggers make use of magic numbers, especially as a magic debug value.0x8BADF00D ("ate bad food") is used by Apple in iOS crash reports, when an application takes too long to launch, terminate, or respond to system events.[1]0x1BADB002 ("I bad boot"[citation needed]) Multiboot header magic number.[2]0xB16B00B5 ("big boobs") is required by Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor to be used by Linux guests as their "guest signature".[3]0xBAADF00D ("bad food") is used by Microsoft's LocalAlloc(LMEM_FIXED) to indicate uninitialised allocated heap memory when the debug heap is used.[4]0xBADDCAFE ("bad cafe") is used by Libumem to indicate uninitialized memory area0xCAFEBABE ("cafe babe") is used by Mach-O to identify Universal object files, and by the Java programming language to identify Java bytecode class files.[5]0xCAFED00D ("Cafe Dude") is used by Java as a magic number for their pack200 compression.[6]0xD15EA5E ("disease") is a flag that indicates regular boot on the Nintendo GameCube and Wii consoles.[7][8]0xDEADBABE ("Dead Babe") is used by IBM Jikes RVM as a sanity check of the stack of the primary thread [9]0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef") is frequently used to indicate a software crash or deadlock in embedded systems. DEADBEEF was originally used to mark newly allocated areas of memory that had not yet been initialized -- when scanning a memory dump, it is easy to see the DEADBEEF. It is used by IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value. On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, it marks freed kernel memory. On OpenVMS running on Alpha processors, DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T. The DEC Alpha SRM console has a background process that traps memory errors, identified by PS as "BeefEater waiting on 0xdeadbeef".[10]0xDEADDEAD ("dead dead") is the bug check (STOP) code displayed when invoking a Blue Screen of Death either by telling the kernel via the attached debugger, or by using a special keystroke combination.[11] This is usually seen by driver developers, as it is used to get a memory dump on Windows NT based systems. An alternative to 0xDEADDEAD is the bug check code 0x000000E2,[12] as they are both called MANUALLY_INITIATED_CRASH as seen on the Microsoft Developer Network.0xDEADFA11 ("dead fall") is used by Apple in iOS crash reports, when the user force quits an application.[1]0xDEFEC8ED ("defecated") is the magic number for OpenSolaris core dumps.[13]0xFACEFEED ("face feed") is used by Alpha servers running Windows NT. The Alpha Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) generates this error when it encounters a hardware failure.[14]0xFEE1DEAD ("feel dead") is used as a magic number in the Linux reboot system call.[15]0xE011CFD0 is used as magic number for Microsoft Office files. In little endian this reads D0CF11E0, "docfile0".[16]0x0000000FF1CE ("office") is used as the last part of product codes (guid) for Microsoft Office components (visible in registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall registry key).0x00BAB10C ("oo-ba-block") is used as the magic number for the ZFS uberblock.C15C:0D06:F00D ("cisco dog food") used in the IPv6 address of www.cisco.com on World IPv6 Day. "Dog food" refers to Cisco eating its own dog food with IPv6.face:b00c ("facebook") used in the IPv6 address of www.v6.facebook.com

Yes, many people seem to confuse things which are sexist with things which are just plain offensive or disrespectful for women.

I agree with the latter half of our post, but I'm not sure I agree with that first bit. While the phrase may not be "sexist" in and of itself (it's fairly neutral, just an adjective and a noun put together), the culture and mindset which included it in a public submission to operating system code, and which held that it was *okay* to publish such juvenile humor in a public code base, could certainly be argued to be 'sexist.'

A culture where things that are 'just plain offensive or disrespectful to women," are okay, normal, or mainstream can certainly be said to be a "sexist" culture. And a culture that allows juvenile, offensive-to-women humor in its discourse without calling it out and self-correcting is one which is most certainly "sexist."

Not really. Last I heard, Matthew Garrett was trying to get Stallman banned from speaking at various conferences over his sexist jokes. Microsoft has very little to do with it, except in so much as you might expect them to know better.

Hey, we're supposed to be the good guys. Not the ones overreacting and lobbing thin accusations of "sexism". Who cares if it was Big Boobs? Everyone loves boobs! I like them all sizes:) Honestly, it's a magic number. Does it really matter?

Programmers leave inside jokes. Usually in comments, sometimes variable names, and sometimes in arbitrary values. I'm sure more than one group had a good laugh about the thing on both sides of the wall. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a comment or variable name that could be interpreted as 'offensive' I'd be a rich man. As long as it's not directed at someone (I've seen those too) or hate speech of some kind, just let it go.

One of the reasons that I enjoy programming is because you can embed little jokes into the source without end users noticing -- they're like easter eggs.

Just don't let the easter egg "hatch". I heard of someone at my job who included some text that shouldn't have been displayed in a section of code that WAS commented out - until someone else was working on it, uncommented the code, and saw his "funny" on the screen. The boss was not very amused.

One product I worked on had an easter egg; just a picture of the development team (before my time) showing up on screen if you held down certain keys while booting. Sometime later a customer found this (after my time). The company had new owners and the new German management were not fun loving, and demanded it be removed. This was an older product still being maintained but with many original engineers being long gone.

However none of the current engineers for the front end UI board knew anything about this stuff or how it got in there. They did a throrough code search and could not find anything that contained that picture or triggered it. None of the code that monitored the key presses seemed to do anything unusual and the boot up code was straight forward. Eventually someone found it after chasing down rumors. Turns out the easter egg was in a back end data processing board and the image was stored in ROM, key presses were monitored on the buss I think. Now the snag was that they couldn't just put in a software patch to fix this. I don't remember the details here but I think they had to leave the image in ROM but had some sort of firmware fix so that it wouldn't be activated.

I think what I find depressing.... in these discussions you see many people pointing out that they don't get it, they don't understand why it is a big deal, etc...

You know what, that is a great thing to say, a great thing to admit. Stop there.

I think what is infuriating to many is people start with "I don't understand" then proceed to "therefor it doesn't matter". Telling people how they should feel about things that you can't understand is the hight of arrogance. Maybe instead these people should take some time and listen, and just accept that other people are impacted by things like this and just because you are not doesn't mean they shouldn't be.

You don't get it. Fine. Then don't tell other people how to feel. Women don't need your big smart male brain to explain how their poor womanly one should react to things that relate to experiences men don't have.

The thing is, this is so far down on the list of "awful sexist shit that goes on in tech circles" that it really doesn't matter. Stupid and immature variable names referring to (presumably female in this case) anatomy are at best a symptom of the larger problem of sexism, but not a problem themselves.

I am a woman, I worked in tech (and now work in research doing tech) and I experienced quite a bit of sexism at a level that most any man, we're hey to hear it said about a woman he cared for, would have lost his fucking mind. THAT is a problem.

But an outcry about stupid variable names just gives people who want to deny sexism pervades tech a convenient way to point at something incredibly stupid and say "they're just over sensitive, they got mad about a dumb variable name" and actually seem persuasive because it is such a trivial and stupid thing to get mad about, relatively.

Most people here (which is a representative group similar to the people that read Linux source code) are not particularly insulted by this term getting into the source. Therefore, if an individual has a problem with the term, it's their problem.

Frankly, I think more people here would have been upset if "Microsoft rules, Linus is an ass" made it into the Linux source as a comment.

YOU don't see anything wrong with it. YOU aren't offended by it. That's very nice and all, but

I both am not offended by it nor do I see something wrong with it. You do realize that these two things are not the same, right?

Your entire post is based on the premise that if someone is offended by something, then there is something wrong with that something. It is that premise that is whats wrong.

You are advocating the politically correct version of the thought police, but instead of telling people how they should think.. you are trying to tell people that they cant induce particular thoughts ("offended") in others. How dare I alter someones thoughts to a mode of being offended.. right? How dare I?

Did it ever occur to you that the "wrong" part in this whole ordeal (besides your entire post) is that someone got offended in the first place? If someone gets offended easily we call it a disorder. Hypersensitive blah blah and all that. You are suggesting that its normal to be offended by some thing, just not a lot of things. Those facts are not in evidence.

I suggest that its always wrong to be offended.. that its always a psychosis. What happens inside your head is your business, not mine. Dont make it mine. you wont like that.

I can respect your opinion, but to a large degree I think we as a society have just gotten too sensitive. That's not a problem that is inherent to women, men, old people, young people, or any particular ethnic group. Its a problem we have all developed.

Yes, it was a childish and stupid prank. Its not something I'd do and I'd wonder about the maturity level of anyone that would stick such rubbish into a piece of code.

That said, it's gotten to the point lately where it seems that the primary occupation of people is to go around looking for things to be offended by. People are so insecure and unhappy in their lives that they need to generate controversy on a regular interval. Every action anyone takes is carefully scrutinized for any hint of content that is currently accepted as "offensive" because no opportunity to be offended can be passed up.

Whether its claiming that gay marriage is an affront to nature or "BIG BOOBS" slipping into the kernel as an immature joke, just learn to ignore something if you don't like it folks.

I'm a male, but to me, it's just a matter of respect for other people.

I find that people who truly respect others the most don't mind when they engage in a little harmless fun. Prudery is caused by respect for the rules, not respect for people, and is ultimately selfish. "If I can't laugh about it, nobody should."

All we're asking, if we're asking for anything at all, is that you develop a little flexibility. There's a time for being a professional man, and a time for being a sexually aroused man.

Men cannot effectively control these reactions, short of whipping themselves, or taking an ice-cold shower every other minute. Even monks cannot claim that they are in control of themselves. What you are asking about is technically impossible in most cases (excepting blind, deaf, dead, very old, or gay men.) Humans look at other humans in well defined sequences, and science discovered those long time ago. Those sequences are selected by evolution as being most beneficial for safety and replication. Humans are not in control of that - it happens faster than one can think. Perhaps a blindfold will help? But no, this will be seen by women as an affront as well:-)

If a man makes a heroic effort to ignore your sexy attire, still he will be extremely distracted by the circumstances; he will not entirely be a professional focused on the job. Such a man will likely be unwilling to work with you in the future, seeing you not as a colleague but as a distraction that cannot end well. It will be a purely logical decision to stay away from a troublemaker. Office is for work, and only a fool would use it differently. (Not that there aren't many fools around.)

And most of us women, while yes, we do sometimes dress sexy at work, that's not a comeon for you at work.

Similarly, a man might hop into his Porsche 911 and drive through a city at 180 mph, but that's not an invitation to the Highway Patrol to stop him.

Unfortunately, some things are related. If y=f(x) you cannot manipulate 'x' with impunity and expect the 'y' to be where you like it to be today. Pull a cat by the tail and it will say meow.

That's a meet me after work proposition.

Many women take it for granted that men can unerringly read their thoughts and extract hidden meanings from little details. However in practice men will have difficulty in reading your intentions even if you print them on a placard and carry it with you everywhere:-) The art of communicating hidden messages with small gestures or positions of a hat died along with the courts of kings. Men just don't bother inferring hints anymore; among men it is a good rule to communicate simply and clearly, so that your message does not have to be decoded. The language of the army is an ultimate example of that - the cost of misunderstanding there is extremely high; you speak clearly or people die.

There is enough real sexism that runs throughout tech circles that bringing up stupid things like this does nothing but give deniers more ammunition to point to when dismissing any charges of sexism as stupid.

I am a woman, I used to work in tech (and now do tech for research academics), and I have experienced a pretty large amount of sexist behavior in my career, from the merely annoying ("you must be the secretary" "no, I'm the team lead") to the work affecting and frustrating ("let me condescendingly explain this incredibly simple thing to you and completely tune out anything you're saying because girls are dumb") to the incredibly fucking horrifying ("you should be raped for doing this that way" "stupid cunt" - yes, both said by people I was collaborating with, and the repercussions to them weren't nearly as severe as they should have been for such a transgression).

A variable named big boobs is so not even on my fucking radar and is so fucking stupid to even mention that I'm actually kind of pissed so anyone even mentioned it. It's dumb and childish to put it in in the first place, but who cares?

I will make an exception to the rule I have of not responding to ACs because you do raise a good point:

No, your daughter absolutely should not be subject to objectification like this and I sincerely hope that she never has to be.

What I am getting at, however, is that there's a kind of threshold that people need to be able to stomach and are kind of expected to stomach in any workplace or on any team.

There is a basic level of hazing where things are, generally, innocuous enough to be brushed off as "stupid and immature and something to let slide as long as it doesn't go past that point" that a well adjusted person can deal with. In my opinion - and everyone will have a different threshold - this falls well under that threshold. I routinely see guys making jokes of a similar level of indecency and immaturity at each other and often far, far more directed at an individual. In this particular case, it's just a generally stupid background noise statement about boobs.

The thing is, I would have no problem with an article that discusses what are called "micro-aggressions" (of which this was just one) and the cumulative effect of a lot of these micro-aggressions on the overall culture. The problem here is that this was one example, that, on its own, is just goofy to single out and get angry over.

I know that these kinds of things don't happen in a vacuum - I know that "bigboobs" is not even a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg of absolutely repugnant misogyny and sexist behaviors that go on. BUT, I also know that the people who are largely responsible for perpetuating that kind of environment are either incredibly hateful assholes or people who really, honestly, don't see how this kind of thing adds up and can lead to a horrifying environment.

For the ones who are hateful assholes, it's extremely unlikely that bothering to point it out will make them change. But for the ones who are just ignorant, it *can* be part of a compelling argument that gets them to change. Where the problem comes in here is that in and of itself, the "bigboobs" thing is not a compelling argument that sexism exists, and it absolutely should be put in a larger context if it gets mentioned.

So, I think that bringing things like this - in aggregate, rather than as individual items - can be a good thing, but complaining about one specific instance that is this generally innocuous outside of any context that it comes off as one of those "first world problems" like "sometimes I only get 4 bars on my iPhone when I'm on the subway" to people who really don't understand the larger problem and how this kind of thing can lead to badness.

According to the universal rules and guidelines set forth at the Aisaiso Women's Convention, any word, phrase, gesture, or implied version of the same can be construted to be a firing offense for any male in any job in any company, if any woman, anywhere, decides it to be 'sexist'. All she has to do is say that " it's sexist, because I say so..." and the man MUST be fired and his job be given to the woman as compensation for his crimes against humanity (women).

Show any woman who can explain to me in a five hundred words or less what exactly a 32-bit number is and what it is used for, and I will seriously consider her argument that use of the character string '0xB16B00B5' could be considered to somehow be offensive.

Until then, from one girl to another, 'Sister, sit down, and shut the fuck up...'